


Season 4 Better Start Off Like This Or Else

by kurotama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1403302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurotama/pseuds/kurotama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles gets home from lacrosse practice to find an uninvited visitor in his room. (Nothing that wouldn't conceivably happen normally in the show. I wrote it as a plausible opening scene for s04e01.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Season 4 Better Start Off Like This Or Else

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning- this was concocted at 3am during midterms while feeling very angry about most of the events of season 3b and lack of character interaction between a certain werewolf & sarcastic idiot. Word diarrhea.

It would definitely be a while before Stiles could sleep properly again.

Not that he wasn't trying to readjust to normal life. Having just come home late from lacrosse practice, Stiles tried not to wake his dad, who was snoring peacefully on the couch in the living room.

Stiles closed the bedroom door behind him quietly, before letting out a sigh. He would've just collapsed onto the bed to try and call it a night, but there was someone already sitting there.

"Derek? What the hell are you doing here?" It was hard to whisper and still sound a little threatening.

Derek was pale, almost unnaturally so with the moonlight streaming into the room, sitting hunched over, bent double and holding his stomach with one arm. With maybe-not-so-unexpected werewolf strength, he grabbed Stiles by the elbow, eyes focusing intently on Stiles' hand.

"Fingers... I need to count your.. fingers." Derek sounded hoarse and out of breath.

"Uhhh..." Stiles could tell Derek was really out of it. "Okay, I'll, er, count with you. One." Stiles extended an index finger.

"Two." Derek winced a little, as if he was in pain. Speaking seemed to make it worse.

"Three." Stiles looked into Derek's face worriedly.

"Four."

"Five." A wave of relief washed over Derek's face for a moment before he started to lose consciousness. He would've landed face-first on the floor if Stiles hadn't reached out to push him back into a sitting position by the shoulders.

"Oh my god. Dude, you're, uh, bleeding," Stiles said, noticing the by-now familiar crimson stains surrounding a deep puncture in Derek's stomach.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Derek grunted.

"Should we go to the hospital or something? I mean, I took some first aid classes with Scott last summer-"

"Just get me a towel so I don't stain your bedsheets. I'm healing, it's just... slower than usual."

Stiles grabbed the towel hanging on his doorknob and handed it to Derek, who then laid down on his back and pressed the towel gingerly into the wound. "Yeah, no, that's totally cool. I guess I'll just sleep in a chair while a werewolf heals up a stab wound on my bed. Typical Tuesday night."

Derek didn't appreciate the sarcasm, but he still felt as though he should apologize. He cleared his throat a little.

"... sorry."

Stiles had settled into the sofa chair beside his bed. "Nah, it's good. This means you owe me a favor now, right? Not that I wanted to kick you out- actually, no, maybe a little- but why didn't you go to Deacon or Scott?"

Derek hesitated, but he decided to tell Stiles. He was, after all, taking refuge in Stiles' room. Again. "I thought I was dreaming. And you've had the most experience with this sort of thing."

"Oh. Yeah. Well... Hold up, you could've just gone up to any random stranger on the street and checked their hands, right?"

"...Well, coming to you just seemed like the right thing to do."

"Oh Derek. I didn't know you felt that way about me." Even in facing the other direction, Derek could hear the smirk in Stiles' voice.

"Shut up. My 'rip your throat out' offer is still on the table."

An awkward silence settled between them. Derek was kept awake by the throbbing dull pain in his abdomen (which was at least subsiding), and on top of his post-nogitsune-possession insomnia, Stiles had been surprised enough by this unexpected visitor to keep him awake for a while.

"Uh, so, what happened to you, man? I thought things were all good in the 'hood. Nemeton shit's been wrapped up, oni and nogitsune's been dealt with..." Stiles ventured carefully, not wanting to pry.

"It's-" Derek paused. He considered telling Stiles about Kate and the new hunters in town, but changed his mind. "It's not your business. Just... Go live your life. Enjoy being a teenager."

Stiles stood up before Derek finished talking, and Derek turned over to look at him, slightly surprised at the sudden movement. "Dude. Are you seriously going to play that card with me? I'm pretty sure getting possessed by a nogitsune shot that horse in the face. My teenage years have already been turned topsy-turvy by werewolves and kanimas and everything else. I don't think there's much left to salvage."

"All the more reason to try and live a normal life now. I can deal with this." There was a hint of steely guardedness in Derek's voice.

"Hey, that kind of attitude was exactly what landed us in hot water last time. At least tell me so we can be prepared. If it's anything to do with hunters, this is going to affect Scott too. It's not all about you." Stiles had crossed his arms over his chest. "After what we've seen, I'm willing to believe almost anything. Try me."

For a moment, Derek looked like he wanted to say everything. "You have to promise not to get involved, then. You and Scott can't interact with or go after these people, got it?"

Stiles nodded in agreement, then swallowed nervously.  _It can't be aliens, right? Or like Pacific Rim, some sort of parallel dimension monster invasion?_

Derek opened his mouth as if to speak, but before he could say anything, he coughed and a splatter of blood soaked the hand he used to cover his mouth. "One second." He released his werewolf claws on one hand, digging into the wound in his stomach. A few seconds of the squelching sound of flesh and innards moving around passed before he finally pulled his hand back out, clutching a fragment of a metal blade. The wound began to close up, as per regular werewolf healing.

"No wonder. I'm pretty sure this was lodged between two of my vertebrae." He raised the fragment up to the light to inspect it, making sure Stiles could see it clearly, before flicking the fragment onto the floor. He had the slightest hint of a smile on his face as he watched Stiles stare at the piece of metal. "Don't worry, I'll clean it-" Before Derek could finish his sentence, Stiles had fainted, crumpling unceremoniously into a heap on the floor.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Stiles was awoken by the obtrusive buzzing of the laundry machine. Blearily, he rubbed his eyes before sitting up. Huh. He didn't remember settling back into the sofa chair, much less tucking a comforter around himself. Derek was nowhere to be seen, but his bed was made, at least. The door creaked open, and a towel was flung in his face by a rather unimpressed Sheriff.

"Is this what all the kids are doing these days? Start laundry at 4am so it can wake everyone up by 5?" Sheriff Stilinski seemed more exasperated than usual. "And you have a bed for a reason, why were you sleeping in the chair?"

Stiles looked at the white towel in his hand and noticed it had a slight pink tinge from the blood.  _I guess I didn't expect Derek to soak it in bleach for 20 minutes and hand-wash it first... Whoa, it's a little weird to imagine him doing laundry. At 4 in the morning. In my house._ Stiles snapped out of his reverie with a shake of his head and readied a snappy retort. "Yeah, you're totally in with what's hip and happening these days, dad. You want me to wake you up next time I do a load? I'll separate the lights and darks, you man the detergent. And I just wanted a change of, uh, sleeping.. environment."

Luckily the Sheriff was too tired to notice anything peculiar. "Stiles, it's too early for this. Either go back to bed or do something productive. I'm going back to sleep." The Sheriff closed the door again, and the shuffling of his slipper-clad footsteps, along with the sunlight just beginning to brighten his room, was comforting to Stiles.

But something in the back of his mind was nagging him and kept him from falling asleep after he got back into bed. (And yeah, he checked for bloodstains on his mattress. Luckily the towel had done its job. And the metal shard was gone.)

The whole thing with Derek - there was definitely something dangerous going on, and sooner or later, he had a feeling they would be deep in the shits again.


End file.
